Online
collaboration tools are transforming the way people work together and keep up
to date on projects. Among the biggest benefits for companies: improved
employee productivity and greater efficiency.

Some of the
biggest measurable productivity gains come in areas such as customer problem
resolution, development of sales proposals or marketing campaigns, and product
launches, says Ted Schadler, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester
Research in Cambridge, Mass.

"If you
get down to that level, you start to see some hard benefits in terms of
productivity, time savings and reuse of assets," Schadler says. In
general, electronic collaboration products allow people to work together in
effective ways when other means of communicating aren't effective. "I
would advise people to think about specific situations where tools such as the
phone or email are not working very well," he says.

Burr &
Forman, a full-service law firm in Atlanta, uses several technologies to
improve collaboration. The firm has used Microsoft's SharePoint 2007 as a
content and document repository for one of its practice groups for three years
and will soon deploy a new electronic content management (ECM) system based on
SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010, says CIO David Michel.

"The
new SharePoint ECM was designed in a such a way that every matter or 'file' has
its own folder structure so that all electronic information can be created,
saved and searched in a very easy way through Outlook," Michel says.
"This includes email, voicemail, documents, PDFs, electronic transcripts,
etc. Our current document management system did not offer any flexibility and
was originally designed only for documents and PDFs, so it's usability was much
more limited."

The new
system will make it easier and faster for users to share and find the documents
they need. "We will also be able to very quickly, easily and securely
provide clients with access to those documents when the situation calls for it
without having to create entirely new systems," Michel says.

SharePoint
ECM "will allow us to consolidate nine different document libraries into a
single 'Burr' library, which means that all forms of electronic communication
related to client matters will be easily available and highly searchable to
everyone in the firm," he adds.

Another
resource the firm uses is an enterprise collaboration service from YouSendIt. Until
recently, Burr & Forman used the service primarily for large file transfers,
but now it will also use the new enterprise Workstream offering, which allows
the firm to send files and content directly from its SharePoint libraries into
a shared folder for clients to see.

"YouSendIt
[allows] us to more quickly share large amounts of information with clients and
outside resources in a secure and auditable way," Michel says.

Another
collaboration tool, AdobeConnect, provides online training so the firm can
train multiple people in different offices at one time. "We also use it
for continuing education training, where input is required to prove that the
student is watching the entire session," Michel says. The product has made
training easier and more widely available, he adds, which helps users become
more proficient with the software they use to do their job.

Finally,
Burr & Forman uses Cisco System's Tandberg video conferencing system for
internal meetings, depositions, interviews and other events. Michel says the
firm has benefitted from decreased travel costs as a result of using video
conferencing.